Salvage (32 page)

“Oh, God.” He takes a step toward us. “They didn't hurt her, did they?”

I don't stop. My limbs hum with rage and fear. “What happened?” I shove him in the chest. “You said you were done with them! Why were they here?”

I catch him off guard, and he goes down in the puddle of gasoline. Confusion flits across his face, then a flash of anger. For a slip, I think he's going to stand and swing at me.

“I
am
done with them.” He picks himself up. “If I was still with them, why would they try to set my house on fire and blow up my gate?” He swings an arm wildly at the twisted fence.

“Why would they do it either way?” I'm shouting now. I know I'm not making much sense, but I can't seem to stop.

“Because they want me back!” Rushil turns away and kicks the drum so hard it falls over in the dirt with a hollow thunk. “They're trying to scare me into it, show me what they can do if I don't.
Chaila
.”

“And you didn't say anything?” My body ticks with anger. “You knew they were after you and you let me leave Miyole here alone?”

Rushil runs his hands through his sooty hair. “They're always threatening me, okay? Anytime I run across them and they remember I exist, they start up again.”

We fall silent. We both know I'm the reason they remembered him this time, me and my work tag.

Rushil looks at Miyole. His jaw and fists clench tight. “Are you okay? They didn't hurt you, did they?”

“No.” I answer for her. “She's frightened, is all. She locked herself inside the ship with Pala when she heard them coming.”

“Smart kid.”

I sit down hard on Rushil's front step and bury my head in my hands. Being smart will only take Miyole so far. It's too dangerous here. She could have been killed when the gate blew. She could have been taken by Wailers, and all because I let Rushil distract me. I let him talk some nonsense about having fun, taking care of myself, and I nearly lost Miyole again.

“It's not good enough.” I shake my head. Perpétue was wrong. It's not enough to try to do good. What comes out in the end matters, too.

“What isn't?” Rushil says.

“This.” I wave my hand at the smoke-filled shipyard. “It isn't good enough. Not for her.”

“Ava . . .” Rushil's voice is soft, pleading.

I stand. “This is your fault.” My words are sharp as razor wire.

Rushil's face crumbles, but I don't care. I grab Miyole's hand and stalk back through the clearing smoke to the sloop. No more weakness. No more waiting. No more dodging. I've got to do what's best for Miyole. It's time to confront my modrie.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
he second time I see Soraya Hertz, she's sitting on a low cinderblock wall in the small park across the street from the university, eating her lunch. I've been lurking around the green, shady Kalina grounds all afternoon, trying to find the right time to talk to her. Earlier, Miyole and I snuck into the shadowy berth of the lecture hall while she stood under a wash of light on the far end, talking on about English and Hindi, and how they're threaded into each other now. She wore a lemon yellow scarf loose wrapped over her dark hair. We stayed until a man in a security uniform started walking our way.

She's even more real now, dusting crumbs from her hands for the pigeons trilling softly around her feet. She wears midnight-blue pants cut loose in the Mumbai style, with white slippers and a white silk shirt clasped tight at the wrists with glass buttons. Her scarf has fallen back from her head. She's some how I remember, but not quite. I had thought she would stand out clear, as she did on the
Parastrata
, but here among these groundways women with their parrot-colored skirts and scarves and saris shot with gold thread, she could disappear as surely as the tree branches overhead weave into one dense, leafy roof.

Miyole and I sit on a stone bench, partially hidden by a juice vendor. Between us and Soraya, old men and couples and mothers with babies rest under the long arms of the trees. A tangle of skinny boys scuffle together, kicking a ball against the cinderblock wall.

Soraya snaps the top over her lunch tin, checks her water bottle to be sure the lid is screwed tight, and stows them both in her bag. She stands and brushes the wrinkles from her pant legs.

“Wait here,” I whisper to Miyole.

I feel as though I'm trailing along behind my body as I take one step and then another, around the juice vendor, past an ancient, knobby rain tree, barely breathing. Nearer now, five meters, then two, then an arm's breadth. I stop. There's some of my mother in Soraya's face. Only my mother never had strands of silvery gray laced in her hair. She never lived that long.

Soraya looks up. “Can I help you?” She frowns. “Aren't you in my morning lecture session? Don't tell me. Is it Pakshi?”

She doesn't recognize me
.

I stop short. But of course she doesn't. She never even saw me aboard the
Parastrata
; Modrie Reller made sure of that. And even if she had seen me, she'd be expecting a pale, amber-haired girl in skirts, not me with my darker groundways looks and my boots.

“No, missus.” My voice sticks in my throat. “You're . . . you're Soraya Hertz?”

“Yes.” She eyes me warily and secures her bag across her shoulder.

“The so doctor?” I want to be absolutely sure.

Shock twists her face. “What did you say?”

“I asked . . .” I look over my shoulder at Miyole, suddenly unsure of myself. “You're Soraya Hertz, right so? The so doctor?” I shake my head. “Dr. Soraya Hertz?”

“Who are you?” Her voice climbs high and tight. Her eyes flick to Perpétue's knife at my belt, then over to the juice vendor and the smallones at the water fountain.

“I . . . I'm Parastrata Ava, so missus. My mother, Ete, was your sister. You're my blood modrie.”

For a moment, the afternoon hangs still around us. Horses and foot traffic trundle away on the nearby street. A crack and distant cheering rise far behind the trees, on the other side of the park.

“No.” Soraya turns away. “My sister's dead. She never had any children.” She stands, grips her bag tight, and walks away from me at a brisk clip.

“Please, missus.” I follow her. “I don't have anyone else to go to. I . . .”

She rounds on me. “I don't know who you are or who put you up to this, but it's sick, do you hear me? Despicable.”

I stop in the middle of the path. She doesn't believe me. Her slippers slap the paving stones as she hurries away. If only I had some proof, some way to make her know . . . I reach for my throat. The data pendant, my ancestry charted back generations on generations. The disk rests warm on my skin, still threaded on its leather cord.

“Please, so missus.” I pull the cord up over my head and run after her. The disk gleams as it twists in the afternoon sun.

“I'm calling the police. Do you hear?” She holds up her crow. “I mean it.”

“Missus, please.” I hold the pendant out to her. “Look at this. It's all I'm asking.”

She pauses mid-dial and looks up. Catches sight of the disk. My throat closes tight.

“Is that . . .” Soraya lets the hand holding her crow fall to her side. She reaches out and cups the pendant in her hand. Its delicate whorl of circuitry glints in the sun. She lets out a breath and slowly, heavily, raises her eyes to mine.

Children run by us as they barrel around the trees in a game of chase.

“If you look on it, so missus, you'll see,” I say. “You only have to look. That's all I ask.”

“No,” she says, hoarse. She tugs at the scarf wrapped around her neck and shoulders. “I don't have to.” The satiny cloth parts, and there it hangs, strung on a silver chain at the hollow of her throat, a data pendant twin to mine.

The
tapri
is loud, brimming full of people, but Soraya finds us a quiet spot at a table wedged between a wall and a window.

“I think I saw you,” she says, studying my face. “When I came aboard to bury your mother, I saw a little dark-haired girl. You were running with the other children, but I didn't think anything of it. They told me Ete never had any children, that she was cursed.”

Cursed
. I swallow. “I saw you too. But these boys, they were teasing me and saying you were a giant come to take me away, so I hid.”

Miyole looks up from her yogurt drink and eyes us curiously.

Soraya shakes her head. “But I don't understand why they lied to me about you.”

I do
, I think, but I don't say it aloud. What good would it do to tell her my crewe thought her corrupt, an outsider muddying our pure world with traces of the Earth? They must have wanted her gone, wanted all our ties severed.

She holds her pendant up to the light. “This was your mother's. Iri and your great-grandmother Laral gave it to me when we buried her.” Her face changes suddenly; she looks stricken. “If I had known she had a daughter, I never would have taken it.”

Iri
. I push my tea away, suddenly queasy. “It's no matter.”

Soraya frowns and leans forward over her own cup of tea. “Are you married, then?” She says it quietly, as though speaking to someone who's fallen ill.

I close my hand over the pendant. “No.”

“No?” Soraya frowns.

“No.” I say it firm. I can't talk on this, not now, not with her, not ever.

Soraya straightens herself in her chair. “So you flew here?”

“Right so,” I say.

“By yourselves?” She glances at Miyole and pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket to mop up the yogurt Miyole has dripped all over her shirt. “Here, dear.”

I nod. “Miyole's mother showed me.” I stir my tea. It seems wrong to say Perpétue's name now, as if the sound of it is still too loud for human ears.

“You poor girl,” Soraya says, still dabbing at Miyole's collar. And then to me. “You should have come to me sooner. Straightaway.”

“I couldn't.” I talk down into my tea. “I mean, I wasn't sure . . .”

“Of course.” Soraya lays her hand awkwardly over my own, then pulls away again quickly.

“Iri said something, before they . . . before she . . . when I left,” I fumble. “She said you helped her with something, something worse than . . . I mean, something secret.”

Soraya purses her lips. “Yes, Iri. And Laral, too. They're the ones who showed me your mother's body. They told me she was my sister.”

My great-grandmother Laral? I see her body again, waiting peaceful for the Void to accept her. Her bone-white hair in marriage braids, her skin thin and yellow like aged rice paper. “But what did you help them do?”

“Bury your mother,” Soraya says. “You know that. But it's not the way you think. Your great-grandfather Harrah didn't want her buried
ad astra
. He wanted me to bring her body back here and bury it beneath the earth or burn it, the way we do—”

A small sound escapes my throat. Even with all the crimes on my head, my crewe still meant to give me over to the Void. They never would have done me the shame of burying me beneath the earth.

“But Iri and Laral couldn't let that happen,” Soraya continues. “They found me and brought me to her body. They told me what it meant, and together we buried her with the stars.”

I work my mouth. “But . . . why?” I finally push out. “Why would my great-grandfather do that to her?”

Soraya picks a piece of lint from her lap and flicks it away. “Harrah said she was cursed. Her looks made her hard to marry off, and then she had trouble getting pregnant. He said her ghost would tail your ship and bring everyone bad luck.”

Her words hit me full in the chest. I touch my hair.
Some bad matter
. Everything comes together. Modrie Reller dying my hair. My father and brother trying to marry me off-ship. My kinswomen so eager to send me into the Void.
They were trying to sever the ties to me, too. First my grandfather, and then all the rest of them. Did no one want us?

“The important thing is, you're here now. You don't have to worry anymore.”

That brings my head up. “You'll help us?”

Soraya nods. She taps her spoon against the lip of her teacup—
clink clink clink
. “You'll have to come and live with me. Both of you.”

“You mean it?” I sit stunned, my tea forgotten.
After all this time, so easy . . .

“Of course.” She leans back in her chair. “We can enroll you both at Revati Academy. The headmistress is a friend of mine. I'm sure we can work something out so you won't have to wait until the next semester begins.”

“Thank you, so missus. That's some kind, but I couldn't go. I've got my job to keep up with.” Miyole would love that, but me?

“Your job?” She blinks. “How old are you?'

“Sixt—no.” I was only some few months shy of my birth date when Modrie Reller told me I was to be a bride. “Seventeen.”

Soraya huffs. “You don't need to work at seventeen. You need to be in school.” She checks the time on her crow. “You can give them your notice tomorrow.”

“But how will I pay back Rushil?” My voice sounds panicked. “And what about the ship?”

“The ship?”

“The sloop,” I say. “What we came here in. We've got it docked nearby, and I still owe Rushil some weeks' rent.”

“How much do you owe?” Soraya asks.

“One hundred and fifty,” I say. “Plus another two hundred if we're going to keep it there another month.”

“Oh, that's nothing.” Soraya waves her hand. “Don't worry, I'll cover the docking fees until we figure out what to do with the ship. Is it in salable condition?”